Alex James: The Great Escape

I'm not sure whether my next move will be chickens or a horse. Probably chickens, but I understand the horse thing now. Country fairs always end with a tractor parade, which is why Geronimo and I like them, but there might be camel racing. There might be a school big band. Sometimes there is something I've never considered; an enormous turnip or a worm factory, but there are always horses.

The Oxfordshire Country Fayre on Sunday was not for the faint-hearted. It was pouring with rain. Geronimo was up for the tractors in any case. He is three and his favourite magazine is Classic Tractor. Claire wanted to give her new wellies a go, and I'd agreed to judge the children's painting and poetry.

We'd been at Chelsea Flower Show during the week, that's like the Michelin-star end of things, formal and elaborate to well beyond the point of folly, but nonetheless absolutely brilliant. The 'Mars garden' that won supreme champion was my idea of heaven. Chelsea in the sunshine was a world away from Oxfordshire in the rain. This was the practical, home-cooking end of the garden spectrum. A day distorted into drama by a gale.

There was nobody there except for the participants. Weather can have this effect. One of the best bills Blur ever played on was at a festival in Brooklyn. It rained that day and there were about 150 people in a stadium that would have swallowed 50,000. I never saw a crowd enjoy themselves as much as that one did, though.

It was raining and blowing more last Sunday than it was that day in Brooklyn. The first person we ran into was David Christiansen, the dairy farmer, and his family. That's like going to a deserted music festival and bumping into Franz Ferdinand. Farmers tend to hang out at fairs like musicians hang out at rock festivals. The cheese man was packing up and the terrier racing was a washout but we bought some mead and went to watch the horses.

There are tractor people and horse people. Claire is a horse person and I'm a tractor man traditionally, but the essence of horse business was laid bare and beautiful in that ring in the rain and I wanted to join in. Young and old, all immaculately turned out hurtled over hair-raising jumps, stuck limpet-like to their mounts. The foul weather didn't touch them as they hared around.

Never an easy task to judge children's drawings. They're all brilliant. Anyone who'd attempted a goat or a chicken, which I've never been able to pull off, was highly commended. Then the Tannoy announced that an ex-rock star would be giving out prizes and the six people that weren't involved with horses, tractors or camels obediently trouped across the vast showground to hear what I had to say. Fortunately two of the six had won prizes. You can never tell how much you're going to enjoy something. It was supposed to be a disaster, but somehow that appearance in front of six soaking wet people was one of the most enjoyable performances of my showbusiness career.

a.james@independent.co.uk

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